# Lewis commented : Interesting, this is essentially the same point I made a couple of weeks ago. IMHO the letter writer is correct.

# cam commented : To add to the Bishop issue, apparently they sit in the House of Lords too.

# adam commented : It's tied into 18th / 19th century Anglo-Irish politics. It was a major source of controversy at the time. The Church of England is still an established church, supported by the taxpayer. That's where the Anglican bishop crossover comes from. Everyone seems a bit embarassed about it now, but at the same time feeling that without the government subsidy all those nice looking churches would stop looking so nice.

# cam commented : I guess it isn't killing them, but wouldn't a Heritage Act suffice for public funding for historical buildings of national significance (including churches) be better and then boot the bishops out of parliament, and dump their appointments on Canterbury.

Wonder why they haven't done it. Must not be publicly palatable, or more likely, not worth wasting political capital over.

# adam commented : There is a detailed system of heritage listing but there are also a lot of churches. It's not just the buildings, people do have a vague sense of support for the CoE and the village institutionalism / tradition it represents.

# adam commented : Amusing note by Simon Hoggart

The Labour MP for Medway hated Tony Blair from the off (when Blair had 93% approval ratings, Marshall-Andrews said: "Seven per cent! We can build on that!"

# cam commented : Politicians in democracies can isolate electoral minorities (for good and bad reasons), I am not surprised that they can't get rid of the CoE subsidy/support because of enough popular support that it is democratically unpopular.

# cam commented : Great quote. Bet that is used every time Marshall-Andrews pops up in an article.

# Jacques Chester commented : This is an interesting development. I think you should consider putting this forward for the next Missing Link.

Or Ken Parish might be interested in it. A lot of Australian constitutional law is based on english constitutional norms.

# cam commented : Jacques, I think it is going to reverberate into Australia because both Au and the UK practice Westminster so closely. Many of the reforms Brown is advocating are directly translatable so I expect it will cause focus on Australian constitutional practice.

# avocadia commented : But there is a firewall between UK and Australian practice called The Constitution of Australia; the more applicable changes that Brown is discussing would have to go through a referendum, no?

# cam commented : Australia (especially the states) has a habit of passing constitutional practice in legislation. For instance the Federal AG having to consult with the state AGs before appointing a High Court judge is in a statutory act. So a lot of these practices can be put into legislation. It means a future government can blast them away if they want, which they cant with a constitution, but it could be done now that way.

# cam commented : If we are to keep a Parliamentary system: then the Senate must become purely legislative. I would support the prohibition of Senators being in the Executive as a constitutional amendment.

cam

# adam commented : I suspect: That as Bronwen Maddox has written in the Times, Democrats in Congress are actually biding their time in order to give their candidate the best shot at the Presidency.

That does also the importance of parties as an institution separate to the relative strengths of the Executive and Judicial branches, I guess.

# cam commented : Yes, I think the biggest pressure: on constitutionalism and conscience is the party political machine.

It is interesting to see the Australian Democrats who are unique in having a party platform that is dedicated to constitutionalism (and its improvement) as well as a party constitution that places the conscience above the national executive. Labor has its pledge, and the Liberals, as a majority party, have executive and cabinet discipline which quashes the conscience. Turnball is having a few issues in this area.

Because of the structure of the Australian Democrats, and the reality that they will not be a majority party and have to worry about executive discipline in parliament, the Democrat\'s Senators all have distinct legislative personalities. Liberal and Labor Senators tend to have media personalities rather than legislative ones.

I guess majority parties are mainly marketing and PR operations. The Greens don\'t fit easily into the little description I have made. Their narrative is different again.

cam

# adam commented : Parties: ... are one of those machines for gaming the political system, as distinct from the polity as a whole. That\'s the risk, that the political system becomes divoces from the underlying reality, or polity. I think this is what would happen in powerful feudal courts and is why concubines, eunuchs and Senators rarely make good executives.

# adam commented : Yep: Very heartening to see Barnaby bandying about language quite familiar to SSR, but foreign to the normal media discourse. Maybe he should guest post :)

I also liked this:

Some of the commentary that surrounded the conscience vote on RU486 shows how far we have fallen. The fact that Senators said, with a straight face, that they had to think about their decision because it was a free vote makes you wonder what they do every other time.

# adam commented : Posted too soon:

The purpose of politics is to deliver to you the highest level of freedom that does not impinge on the rights of others.

Struth, Cam, are you and Barnaby sharing a speechwriter?

# cam commented : Some comments/observations:

By proportional voting you mean multi-member districts right? I wouldn\'t have a problem with that. The Tasmanian electoral system seems to produce both majority and minority government outcomes. Though I am inclined to think that the robson rotation is a critical piece of electoral technology down there.

I disagree with the quotas for men and women, and cross-sex voting. Elected politicians are supposed to be specialists who operate with the confidence of the public. If I am to have a neuro-surgeon (an extreme form of labor specialisation) operate on my brain I don\'t care what sex they are, only that they are competent.

I don\'t think forcing a 50% female parliament will stop some of the legislative violence toward women either. Females are just as capable of being christian asshats as men are.

A better technology for getting a more representative sample of the population is sortition .

I don\'t think that putting executive power in the Senate will give you the outcome you desire, especially in terms of separation of powers and legislative accountability. By putting the Executive in the Senate, the system becomes a proxy-unicameral one.

A bicameral works when informal/formal executive power is in the House, and the Senate keeps tabs on the Executive (PM/Cabinet) through commissions, inquiries, counter-legislation etch etch.

Even though Australia pollutes that separation of powers by allowing Senators to be in the Cabinet and Outer-Ministry (a neat trick to put Senators under Executive discipline), the Executive power is largely separated from the house so it can act as an independent check. The problem is, party discipline can destroy a separate but equal system.

I don\'t have a problem with super-districts at the federal level. At the state level where politics needs to be more local I would, but at the federal level where representatives are (supposedly) pursuing national goals, I don\'t think granular representatives matter so much.

Thanks for posting.

cam

# adam commented : Powerful Senators: So basically your hope is by beefing up the mandate of Senators, you make them more powerful and independent of their parties? Certainly seems to work that way in the US. Of course without as much allegiance to the party machine, they might have more need of US-style lobby support as well.

Would you still follow the convention that the PM came from the Lower House?

With your non-geographic multi-member lower house electorates, what criteria do you expect to be used? Eg are you planning electorates by income tax bracket, football team, or what?

# avocadia commented : Subtle changes?:

A small number of subtle changes? Well, I guess so. Basically the House has become the Senate and the Senate has become the House. Of course, the regions in the proportional house are different to what exists now, and you\'ve (ever so fractionally) reduced the potency of a woman\'s vote compared to a man\'s, since there are more women than men in Australia but equal representation. Nevermind the explicit denial of a meritocracy in pre-empting the gender split. I guess I could live with all that, except the changes also dictate to me who I may vote for, or at least who I may not vote for.

I don\'t mean to sound hostile, because as I said, what you\'ve written has some interesting ideas. I just feel that the limitation on who I may vote for is a deal-breaker for me. It is out-and-out anti-free-association. What\'s more, to enforce it would mean the end of the secret ballot, as the AEC would have to monitor who I voted for.